Understated
Disclaimer: The lyrics used belong to Something Corporate, from their song "Walking By." The phrase taken from a book is from Anthem, by Ayn Rand. As for the characters etc…no. No. You know this, I know you do.
A/N: I have the one parter disease or something. Heh. But I'm having so much fun! I'd love to hear what you think, and as always, feedback is very much appreciated.
To Steph, for getting me addicted to yet another song…you always manage to do that! And "analyzing" it was so much fun! Huge thanks to Mai for the help, suggestions, and the beautiful banner. You rock. And to Lee, because she's awesome.
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She asks him about the endings.
The first time, it isn't so strange.
His hand moves down her arm; hers goes to his face and stays there for a minute: everything seems frozen, perfect. He draws her closer, closer, closer, and there is so much sweetness there that nothing will ever be wrong again.
And at three in the morning, she is lying beside him, his arm curled around her shoulders, protectively, grasping something that's not entirely there anymore, something that will never return, because this is the last chance. He smoothes her hair against her face, gently.
She wakes up, but her eyes don't open. He knows she's awake, because she tenses and doesn't relax. Doesn't relax for almost another hour, when she does fall asleep again, and not for a moment did she open her eyes, did she sit up to kiss him.
He remembers the beginning. They'd both wake up at random moments and just smile, reveling in the delight that was the other right there. They'd give each other kisses because they could, because they could and they wanted to, and, most of all, just because. They'd stay home from work for fun. Rory would try to cook. Jess would do the cooking—he made her fancy dishes for them to laugh at, while she'd pour macaroni out of a box into a pot and demand that he boil the water. Every night made him happy, a word he wasn't used to thinking or saying, simply because to find her, at most, he'd have to turn around. He got good at it too, turning around at the right time, always just when she needed someone to stabilize a shaking world.
He tightens his grip, she doesn't wake up. He buries his face in her shoulder and falls asleep himself. He doesn't dream, and he wonders if she is. She used to tell him she fell asleep thinking about him.
They get up late the next morning.
It's her customary groan and smile—she has never been a morning person. He hasn't either, but he has gradually eased into the role of one, because someone has to be. She glances out the window and comments on the weather, complains about the clouds. She wants the sun; she hates the color gray. He nods and cracks the eggs she likes. She absently reaches for a book, the top of a pile wavering at the edge of the counter.
"I was reading this the other day…" she tells him.
"You like it?"
She shrugs. "Too many exclamation points…I like things understated."
"Once you get past that, it's not bad." He turns to the eggs for a moment, then back to her. "You call 'the holy and sacred word I' understated?" he teases.
She smiles, the old smile. "Oh so very." This is when the time of day no longer qualifies as morning; when she is allowed to be the scarily cheerful person she often is. "What happens to him, at the end?" she asks.
"What?" The question startles him.
She laughs a little. "I have something else I want to read…but I have to know what happens."
He gets so caught up in the story, he forgets the breakfast. Half of the eggs get burned, but he puts those on his own plate.
She gives him a one-armed hug as she leaves for work; he softly kisses her hair but doesn't think she notices. As the door closes, he gets his own stuff ready, and he remembers the detail he forgot to tell her. It should have been obvious that something was left out. Maybe she was still half asleep after all.
The pile of books topples to the ground when he shuts the door.
So why do you leave these stories unfinished?
He finds her asleep on the sofa when he gets home. He closes the door quietly, but she is a light sleeper. She walks up to meet him, puts her hands gently on his shoulders as he's locking it. He whirls around and she leans up to touch her lips to his.
They have spaghetti for dinner. She tells him about her insane boss again, he tells her about the fine on his library card. Her favorite show is on tonight, and he always agrees to watch with her. She curls up in his lap, holding him more tightly than he can remember her doing in a long time. He adjusts to it easily, even gladly. His head rests on hers, and during the commercials, he catches her looking wistfully out the window, but he never says anything.
There are people walking and cars roaring down there. Apartment buildings by the dozens, taxis, briefcases, subways speeding underground. Deadlines, due dates, manuscripts that need to be sent, assignments that need to be finished. There are some of those things in both their backpacks, by the door, but they tend to ignore that fact until they can't. When the show is over, that is where her gaze goes. He kisses her neck.
Usually, her reaction to the idea of work is at least slightly closer to putting her fingers in her ears and humming loudly.
She smiles and tells him that she's working with an intern from NYU. She's interesting, Rory tells him, she used to travel all around the world, and she tells stories about it. She explains a fair in India she heard about today. When she tells him it's a 'she,' he is relieved, although he shouldn't be worried…
Rory talks about how…Marianne? likes college life so much. She says it's like she's part of it, a teacher now. She says it's strange, says she feels old, but it's nice. That wistful look is back on her face.
It's the same one she had looking out the window, the same one that night in the car, when he promised to teach her a foreign language (well, he still hasn't). But now there is more of an immediacy to it. There is no looming future, big and bright and confusing, all-encompassing. There is no world where everything works out right, but no world where it's all wrong either. Everything conflicts somehow. All there is—it's here; this is life, not just waiting for it. It's better than he's always thought, but she has also always had higher hopes, higher expectations. More detailed dreams.
New York can be so damn exciting, but there's no Yale. There's no group of 9,000 people who all seem to know each other, there's no diner everyone always meets at, and there is no gazebo in the middle of the city.
Gazebo. City. Those words don't belong in the same sentence.
But as always, it's just the two of them, and that's all that matters. He's not sure if anything else has ever mattered to him this way, and it's close to terrifying that some—even most?—of it is not in his hands. He wishes for that, every night she falls asleep on his arm, every night he's lying on top of her, every night when there are barely ten minutes that her lips aren't on his.
And when she's had a hard day, a hard week, breaks down on his shoulder…he holds her and whispers everything he knows to say. She hugs him as hard as she can, hanging on like he's her anchor. That is when he doesn't wish for more control, when he's glad it's just them, a pair, a partnership. Because if he is an anchor, he doesn't want to risk breaking the hook she welded on herself.
Usually she doesn't break down. Usually it's just the clouds in her eyes that clear with a kiss; surrender to the normal deep blue. Tall buildings reflect in them when she walks down the street.
He wraps his arm around her again, from behind her, and she leans against him, gripping his wrist. Suddenly she looks sad.
She was raised in a New England village.
He notices it all. The books she leaves on the arms of chairs, on her pillow. The books she falls asleep reading. Covers worn, pages bent, and some are yellowed, some are stained. She must have read part of twenty books this week, and he is sure she hasn't finished one.
Every night she falls asleep with a book in her hand, and one morning she leaves earlier than early, with a desperate apology and an explanation of how she's required at this meeting. He doesn't have to go in today. He kisses her goodbye and goes to make their bed, and when he touches her pillow he feels something hard. Lifting it up, he smells Rory on the pillowcase; breathes in. Underneath it is a copy of Northanger Abbey. He opens the cover, on impulse, and sees that his name is in the top right-hand corner, in his own messy handwriting.
He sits down on the unmade bed and sighs, running a hand through his hair.
Even if he's often pretended he didn't understand something, until now, he always has (or thought he has) and just never admitted it.
He lies down on the bed, still not made, his head on Rory's pillow, and he opens his book.
He must have fallen asleep, because suddenly Rory is there, yelling at him, asking him why he found the book. Why is he reading it, it's hers. Why is he lying here, that's her place. She sits down on the chair and she cries and cries, and he can't get up or comfort her, can't explain, stuck where he is, unable to move and unable to speak. She leaves to the next room, and he sees her lie down on the sofa through the crack in the door. Then it's closed, and she's disappeared. He can hear her crying still.
He wakes up suddenly, very suddenly, shaken. At first it's the relieved feeling after a nightmare, the repetition of "it's just a dream, it's just a dream."
And then it's the awful realization that not all of it is his troubled psyche.
Some of it is just in front of him.
Dreams take away that shiny coating people hold over real life.
He replaces the book, gets up, and does straighten the covers. He wonders, with a hint of sadness, or regret, or something he isn't sure of…if she'll come home and ask him why he didn't notice the book, she was talking to him about that part last night when he was falling asleep, didn't he make the bed? He reaches out and switches his pillow with hers.
I could stay here all day but that's not how you feel.
When she comes back, she's tired, and she laughingly calls him lucky for being able to skip work. He smiles wryly. She sits beside him, molding herself into his frame, and he doesn't know whether to stiffen and barely let her stay there, or hold her tightly, pull her in with everything. He wants to do the latter, which is why he's so confused.
He settles for somewhere in between, laces her fingers through his. "What do you want for dinner?" he whispers in her ear.
"What do you want?" she answers, moving closer.
Something rips at his heart, because she's not being bossy and decisive. He feels like laughing out loud at himself. He's being an idiot. "Order pizza?"
If she jokes and asks for one of those weird things he used to make, he just might make it, for the hell of it. She grins, agrees, kisses him and doesn't ask. He leans over to get the phone, and he can't quite reach it without moving away from her.
They eat on the couch. She takes the last piece and he grins in spite of himself. He remembers the movie nights, her complaints, the candy she would swear she'd never look at again, the candy that he'd find her eating the next day.
Finished, they pile everything into the pizza box and leave it on the coffee table, which is scratched and stained in some places from spilled drinks, fingerprints, and the fact that they never use coasters.
She lies down, stretching out, her head in his lap. He leans to kiss her softly, and she kisses back, pulling him closer, intensifying it before they break apart. He fights the desperate desire to kiss her harder, doesn't give a damn about how uncomfortable this position is. She sits up and her lips touch his hair. His hands dance along the hem of her shirt. If he were speaking, his voice would be breaking right now.
They while away the time with 'almost' movements. The game never seems to end; there is never a winner. He notices her beginning to fall asleep and leads her to the bedroom.
Her head hits the pillow and she jerks back up. He winces. She pulls out the book.
"I keep forgetting to give this back to you," she laughs.
Words crash and collide in his mind, possible responses, and none of them work. He takes it, sets it on his bedside table, and covers her mouth with his.
She's tired. She curls up with her head on his arm, her face hidden in the folds of his shirt. His hands glide across her back, lightly, just enough so she can feel it. Sleepily, she holds him tighter.
Her token moves forward three steps on their game board; his loses a turn. She giggles and pats his shoulder. He always has bad luck with board games; they both know it, after enough Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit on rainy nights. (No, they aren't luck games, but he always gets all consonants. He always gets the impossible questions.) He looks toward the FINISH, but there are no colorful pictures there. The vision in his head is rather reminiscent of the still-cloudy, although darkened, sky outside.
The glowing red numbers of the digital clock catch his eye: only 11:47, but she has had a long day.
She awakens suddenly from her half-sleeping and whispers to him that she's getting a glass of water. He releases his grip, grown tighter with less conscious attention on his movements, smiles a little and nods. The pillow nearly covers his face for a moment when she gets up, and the slight scent permeates his thoughts. Rory, Rory, Rory.
Why do we lie here and whisper goodbyes?
Weeks pass monotonously, surprisingly so, because even the mention of a book, a second's kiss, is normally interesting, exciting. It's surprising how shocking it is when you know it is coming.
Or not.
He hears the click of the toaster from the kitchen, but he doesn't want to get up. She steps through the bedroom door from the bathroom, pulling a shirt over her head. Her eyes meet his, and he can't pinpoint the look that crosses her face. All he knows is that it's real, it's honest, and he doesn't like it.
It almost looks like regret.
This is something he learned to live with long ago, something he has grown accustomed to ignoring, forgetting. You develop an immunity to it after it's conquered the first time. When logic is destroyed, love is the path followed, and nothing is regretted: the only options are happiness and pain.
Right?
And then after that step is taken, nothing is sure. It's a good thing. It means that sometimes she'll get up early and surprise him with breakfast; they'll hold each other for so long it will get cold, and he'll eat it anyway. It means that he will occasionally call in sick for her, wake her up at noon, and laugh in her face, and they'll spend the rest of the day lying beside one another.
He yawns and sits up, and she sinks down on the edge of the bed, resting her head on his shoulder. It's all he needs to crack, but he doesn't. He puts his arm around her shoulders and plays absently with the ribbon on her collar.
There are fewer cars down on the street than there are usually. The sky is cloudy again; there are no weak spots where the sunlight nears breaking through. It's cold; he thinks maybe they turned the air conditioning up too high last night. He feels like the words "the end" are painted on the air in front of him, almost tangible.
"I'm tired," she says softly. She's always been one to state the obvious; it used to be a kind of joke.
"I know."
He feels idiotic for saying it. But he can't think of anything else. Their silences were always comfortable, always filled with words that came easily, unforced, when they were needed.
This is unintelligible fingernails on a chalkboard. They wince inwardly, still sitting together because that's what they do.
It's right.
It was always right.
Past tense scares him, but it scares her more. It's why she never brings it up. It's why she refuses to admit what happens, what's happening. It's why she's leaning on him right now.
And he knows it's why he's responding.
It's half the reason. Not all. Not everything has changed, not everything.
Their mantra of 'it's okay' is cracking, quickly, splintering right before them. It's like crawling out on ice that's too thin, on purpose, trying to save someone who's sinking far too fast to save.
She shivers. "You cold?" she asks.
He shrugs. "Not really," he lies.
"I'm gonna turn up the heat?" She stands and he nods.
She hands him the toast on a paper plate: it's cold, it's hard. But he eats it anyway; grabs his bag. She sinks her head into her hands and looks up. "God, I don't want to go to work."
"Rory?" he says.
"Ah…it's nothing," she assures him. "Crappy assignment, that's all…"
"Okay."
It's the word that always works. It can be the end or beginning of any conversation; it always fits, it always sounds right. And they need it to be right. This is right, this is right, it's always been right.
Right, correct, no doubt about it, how it's supposed to be.
And it kills him to know, to see in his mind, how different it might have been and still have been him and her. Jess and Rory.
He leaves for work, and so does she. He watches her disappear into the subway; he catches a taxi, and they begin to melt slowly into their routines. It's still gray, gray everywhere, all the buildings, reflected in the windows. He stares outside as the taxi drives, and he feels again like a fourteen-year-old kid in the middle of New York, who, despite his tough guy attitude, never got tired of watching the world go by around him.
Every day is the same pattern, gray sky (or blue sky), black and silver of the subway entrance, bright yellow of the taxi that pulls to the sidewalk for him. And the honey brown color of her hair, shining even in no light, which is the last thing he sees every day before she's gone.
It's supposed to be right. Right, right, right.
It doesn't change. It never changes. It means no happily ever after; no one wins the game. No finale, no party, no nothing.
So why do you leave these stories unfinished?